Hinske and the fish

It sounds like a 1970’s television show, doesn’t it? Not so fortunate, but I can give a blog entry.

Let’s start with the latter portion of our title first — the fish. The image you are seeing is that of David Ortiz holding up about a five-pound bass. Good stuff. But, unfortunately for Papi, it was not his fish to fry. The man who caught this fine fish is J.D. Drew, who was working the pond that just happened to be in back of Ortiz’s house. Upon seeing his teammate, Ortiz came out to check out the right fielder’s haul … and a picture (thanks to Drew’s camera) was born.

As for Hinske, this is what he had to say about the Red Sox‘ offseason pursuit of his services before he signed a one-year, $1.5 million deal with Pittsburgh to play both corner outfield and infield positions:

“They contacted me right after (Mark) Teixeira signed with the Yankees and said they were going to make an offer in a couple of days. But right before they were supposed to make the offer they said that (Mark) Kotsay had taken the $1.5 million they were going to offer. So they never actually made me an offer but I thought they were going to.

“I was talking to quite a few teams so I wasn’t going to sign imminently with anyone. I was waiting for all the offers to come in. I heard from about eight teams but I only received offers from a couple and Pittsburgh was on me the hardest from the start. We felt like it was a good spot for me.

(Regarding whether the Red Sox were on the radar before the phone call) “I hadn’t heard from them and obviously they were going after Teixeira, but when they knew they weren’t going to get him and they didn’t know if Kotsay was going to come back and take that deal, and I had been there before. It didn’t end up happening but it was good to hear back from them.

“One thing I didn’t want to do is go back to a bench role. I know right now I’m a fourth outfielder, but I have an opportunity to get a lot of at-bats. I can’t say I would have signed with the Red Sox because Mike’s probably healthy and I’m right back in the same situation I was in ’07. It’s great to be with the Red Sox but I want to play.”

Hinske hit 20 home runs with a .247 batting average in 381 at-bats last year with the Rays, making $800,000 after originally inking a minor league deal.